{"id":329079,"date":"2026-07-18T05:34:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T05:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=329079"},"modified":"2026-07-19T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T07:59:10","slug":"widdecombe-murder-means-attacks-on-free-speech-swap-sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=329079","title":{"rendered":"Widdecombe Murder Means Attacks on Free-Speech Swap Sides"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Kit Knightly \u2013 Off-Guardian July 16, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Left, then right. Right, then left. That\u2019s the way these days.<\/p>\n<p>First, they pitch their solution to an imaginary or exaggerated problem from the left-wing perspective, then pitch the same problem-solution combo tweaked to appeal to the right. Or vice versa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnline hate speech\u201d is the most obvious example of this in recent times.<\/p>\n<p>It started with the left, who are now fully on board after months of fear porn about the online \u201cfar-right\u201d spreading \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201chate speech\u201d about illegal immigration, peppered with staged riots and other \u201cviolence\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Fully dosed up on mob-rule Kool-Aid, and safe in the knowledge that it was only the <em>bad people<\/em> on <em>the other side <\/em>who would ever be squished by the giant jackboot they were cheering on, the British left gleefully watched as the government made thousands of arrests for tweets and Facebook statuses and other similarly asinine things.<\/p>\n<p>But now Ann Widdecombe has been murdered, and it\u2019s time for the jackboot to switch to the other foot.<\/p>\n<p>Within hours of the alleged murder, it was being reported the crime was \u201cterrorism\u201d:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">BREAKING: Ann Widdecombe was the victim of a targeted attack, says Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of counter terrorism policing.<\/p>\n<p>Our West of England correspondent Dan Whitehead has the latest.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/L7aBzUA66Z\">https:\/\/t.co\/L7aBzUA66Z<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/KufD4cTXXJ\">pic.twitter.com\/KufD4cTXXJ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sky News (@SkyNews) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SkyNews\/status\/2077050558569927102?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 14, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to see where that goes: the perpetrator will inevitably have been \u201cradicalised online\u201d by \u201cunregulated hate speech\u201d or \u201cviolent content\u201d. This is nothing new.<\/p>\n<p>But it gets worse.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier today, the Scottish Police announced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cx2ln31g8gvo\">the arrest of Heather Herbert<\/a>, an Aberdeen University employee who had posted that Widdecombe\u2019s murder was \u201cgood news\u201d and they hoped it was \u201cextremely painful\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re calling it a \u201chate crime\u201d, which is wrong. It\u2019s hate, but it\u2019s not a crime. Hating people isn\u2019t, and shouldn\u2019t be, illegal. Neither is saying distasteful or offensive things.<\/p>\n<p>As you can imagine, all the pro-free speech right that turned Lucy Connolly into a sort-of Poundland Emmeline Pankhurst immediately rushed to defend Herbert\u2019s right to speak her mind, right?<\/p>\n<p>Wrong. Instead, people like Tommy friggin\u2019 Robinson are suddenly concerned about violent rhetoric:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Make no bones about it, the left&#8217;s vile rhetoric had Ann Widdecombe murdered. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Snv38YOWM0\">https:\/\/t.co\/Snv38YOWM0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Tommy Robinson \uf1ec\uf1e7 (@TRobinsonNewEra) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TRobinsonNewEra\/status\/2077183998933996009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 15, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen this before. After the alleged shooting of Charlie Kirk in the US, pundits who had been previously ride-or-die free speech enthusiasts were suddenly waving the pitchforks for tasteless hot-takes and edgy jokes.<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote at the <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2025\/09\/16\/charlie-kirk-or-how-the-right-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-cancel-culture\/\">time<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">under the right circumstances, both teams now agree that free speech doesn\u2019t mean the freedom to say things that are morally wrong or factually incorrect or\u2026whatever. Which is actually the antithesis of free speech. Everyone believes in free speech they agree with.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2025\/09\/16\/charlie-kirk-or-how-the-right-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-cancel-culture\/\">Charlie Kirk; Or How the Right Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cancel Culture<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And now the exact same thing is about to happen here.<\/p>\n<p>Now would be a really good time for everybody \u2013 left and right \u2013 to have a collective awakening moment, and realise that empowering the state to arrest people for opinions and jokes is actually a REALLY bad idea, and we need to stop it now before it goes any further.<\/p>\n<p>But I wouldn\u2019t hold your breath.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Support Off-Guardian:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/offguardian\">Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.subscribestar.com\/offguardian\">Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/donate\/?hosted_button_id=CKFB3MH8CGB9U\">Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2026\/07\/16\/widdecombe-murder-means-attacks-on-free-speech-swap-sides\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now would be a really good time for everybody \u2013 left and right \u2013 to have a collective awakening moment, and realise that empowering the state to arrest people for opinions and jokes is actually a REALLY bad idea. Kit Knightly explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":329081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329083,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329079\/revisions\/329083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/329081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}